array_key_exists($key, $array) vs !empty($array[$key])

Question

I\'ve seen a lot of people do the former, is there any performance benefit doing one vs the other? Or is it just an eye candy? I personally use the latter every time as it i

Answer 1

The other responses focus on the differences between the two functions. This is true, but if the source array does not contain null or 0 or "", ... (empty values) values you can benchmark the speed of the two functions:

Which gave me the following results:

For a small array:

• array_key_exists: float(0.18357992172241)
• empty: float(0.072798013687134)
• isset: float(0.070242881774902)

For a relative big array:

• array_key_exists: float(0.57489585876465)
• empty: float(0.0068421363830566)
• isset: float(0.0069410800933838)

So if it's possible it's faster to use empty or isset.